1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an image forming method, an image forming apparatus, and a process cartridge.
2. Related Art
An electrophotographic image forming apparatus generally has the following configurations and processes. That is, a surface of an electrophotographic photoreceptor is charged to a polarity and a potential, a charged surface of the electrophotographic photoreceptor is selectively erased by image exposure to form an electrostatic latent image, a toner is then attached to the electrostatic latent image, the latent image is developed as a toner image, and the toner image is transferred to a recording medium and is output as an image-formed material.
In recent years, the electrophotographic photoreceptor has an advantage of rapidly obtaining high printing quality, and therefore the electrophotographic photoreceptor has been widely used in fields of a copying machine, a laser beam printer, and the like.
As the electrophotographic photoreceptor used in these image forming apparatuses, an electrophotographic photoreceptor (inorganic photoreceptor) using an inorganic photoconductive material such as selenium, a selenium-tellurium alloy, a selenium-arsenic alloy, or cadmium sulfide in the related art has been known, and in recent years, an organic photoreceptor (organic photoreceptor) using an organic photoconductive material having excellent advantages in the points of manufacturability and disposability at low cost has become the mainstream.
It has been proposed to improve strength by providing a protection layer on the surface of the electrophotographic photoreceptor, in order to obtain a long life and high reliability of the electrophotographic photoreceptor.